Return
by TiaKisu
Summary: The TARDIS knows. She can see it in the depths of time and space itself and just for once she won't allow him to run.


_Just another very random little piece. Nothing spectecular, I reckon, and nothing revolutionary either. Still, I certainly hope you enjoy. :)_

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**Return**_  
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You smile, so brave, so wounded, and you hope she doesn't see as you accept her bitter choice. All your scars and all your pain. The darkness that has been hunting you without cease. Just for a day she's chased it away, her light banishing the shadows that you try to run from so desperately.

You hoped that she would come - that tiny part within you that has not yet given up recognising what she can offer you, finding in her all that you seek and wakening to make you say those words that you haven't used in too long a time.

The one question that you have not dared to ask ever since you ended the War.

It has been so long, my Thief, so long since you deemed yourself worthy of someone to walk the path with you. Someone you could show the wonders of this universe to, someone you could teach and make understand. It couldn't possibly be the same as before, you and I we both know, but it could be something new.

We now are the last of our kinds, left to remember and live on. Carrying a burden that you have decided is yours alone to bear, and that you are so afraid to share with anyone, even with me.  
It has weighed you down, made you hide behind smiles that are never quite mirrored in your eyes, made you be reckless – almost as if you strove to leave me alone. To be forgotten and to die.

The last child of Gallifrey running to escape what he cannot flee from.  
Trying to escape his memories and his very life itself.

But today everything was different.

I know you cannot understand, cannot comprehend how she can make your hearts ache when you have known her for barely a glimpse in time. But you have seen the life that she emits, the warmth that seems to radiate all from her – melting away the cold that you feel so very deep within.

She makes you breathe again when before your chest had stopped rising; makes you look at the world and see the good that remains – see all that you saved.

Makes you smile for real.

You know she is the light to your dark, know, although you are not yet aware of it, that she is all that you want in this universe.

And although you now mutter that you never ask twice, your voice low and broken, I know that you will go back for her. I can see it in the depths of time and space itself: Two fates merging, two minds destined to save each other and conquer the dark.

She will pull you from the abyss, the Wolf tearing the Thief from the chasm of his past.

Together you will mend the broken pieces, will heal the wounds that won't stop bleeding. And even when the stars are fading out she will be at your side, defying the laws of her and your world alike – fighting with you when all around the sky is falling.

She will always be a mystery to you - that much won't ever change - and yet you will know her better than you have ever known anyone before. Will burn in her wake - shedding the heavy mantle of battle and loss and grief to become who she sees you to be, even now.

You try to stir me away, hurt and forlorn as you are, away from her presence and the promise that her mere existence is, but I won't let you run.  
This one time I will make you stand still.  
Will make you return.

There is one thing you didn't tell her yet, one thing that will make all the difference. Because it allows her to go and yet know she's not leaving her own kind behind.

Tell her, my Thief. Tell her of all I can offer her and see the light in her dark eyes blaze.

Because your fate and hers are one. Written in the very stars themselves, only for me to make out, it is there – waiting to be fulfilled. Return and walk that path which unfolds right in front of you, golden and bright as my heart.

Return and make her my Wolf as you have made yourself my Thief.  
Travel through time and space with me.

The Doctor and Rose Tyler.  
In the TARDIS.

As it must be.


End file.
